Long before its world premiere in Sydney on Monday night, Angelina Jolie's Unbroken was being talked of in Hollywood as a serious Oscar contender. But in Australia, it was being hailed in different terms – as the best advertisement in years for the virtues of this country as a place to come and make movies.

Jolie's $65 million World War II epic, based on the true story of American Olympian turned bombardier Louis Zamperini, is set in 1920s California, 1936 Berlin, 1942 Hawaii and Japanese POW camps during the latter stages of the war. Doubling for them were, respectively, Tamworth, Blacktown, Mission Beach and Cockatoo Island. Few untrained eyes will spot the fakery.

The most crucial location, however, was the huge water tank at the Roadshow studio on the Gold Coast, where they filmed the scenes in which Zamperini and two other crew members spent 47 days at sea in an inflatable life raft after their plane was shot down over the Pacific.

"You can't shoot on water for a long period of time," explained producer Matt Baer. "Movies that have tried – Jaws, Waterworld – have gone way over budget and over time. We had to do the movie in a tank."

Mexico was a contender, but Australia made more sense. "Because it had this tank, it was a case of can we find the other locations the film needs. And we were able to," said Baer. "That's what it boiled down to: would it be economically and physically feasible?"

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Jolie enumerated the factors that made filming here attractive to her: "The tax incentives were good, the locations were perfect, the crew are amazing. There's very much a community – we've all become friends – and at the same time there's a very, very strong work ethic.

That's all music to the ears of the local industry, but the main factor tipping the shoot in Australia's favour is far more prosaic: the exchange rate.

With our dollar dipping below US90c for the first time in years, Australia has suddenly become a contender for "runaway" productions from Hollywood again. According to Screen Australia's annual production report, released last week, foreign features accounted for $159 million last financial year, up from $131 million the year before and a significant rebound from the low of $2 million in 2008-09, when the Australian dollar was at its strongest. The ideal figure, industry sources suggest, is an Aussie dollar that trades around US75c.

Tax breaks are also crucial in bringing Hollywood films to Australia, and while Australia's rebate of 16.5 per cent of local spend is at the lower end (many countries and states outside of California offer 30 per cent or more), the variety of locations, experience and flexibility of crew, and the good experiences of others who have filmed here help make it attractive.

With Pirates of the Caribbean set to shoot in Queensland in 2015, Screen Australia chief Graeme Mason is confident the uptick seen in the past few years will continue. "We would suggest that next year will be an even bigger year again," he said.

Advocates such as Ausfilm argue it is all about balance, that a reasonable level of foreign spend is important for upskilling the workforce and offering continuity of employment so that the quality of indigenous productions can also improve.

Further than that, Australia as a whole benefits enormously from our industry's brushes with Hollywood, argues Screen Australia's Mason.

"Angelina being here or when Johnny Depp is here [for next year's Pirates of the Caribbean 5] or Cate Blanchett getting up in front of a billion people at the Oscars talking about Australia is publicity that the trade department and Tourism Australia could never get," he said.